Editorial Note SOCIAL SCIENTIST had organised a three-day Marx Centenary seminar at New Delhi on October 6-8 on the theme "Karl Marx and the Analysis of Indian Society". The seminar covered a wide area: the nature of the pre-colonial Indian society, the impact of colonialism botli on the Indian as well as on the British economies, the ramifications of the caste system, the character of class struggles in Indian history, the contours of social change in modern India, and the content of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The accent throughout was on examining Marx's and Engels's writings with a view to making productive use of the wealth of insights they contain for an ^understanding of our own past and present. The seminar drew together a number of distinguished Scholars both from the academic world as well as from the Marxist political movement. The discussions were often lively, usually absorbing and always purposive. In order to give the readers of Social Scientist some idea of these discussions, we publish as the first article of this issue a fairly lengthy report on the seminar which not only presents the gist of the papers, but also summarises the discussion from the floor in each session. We have been able to obtain a comprehensive report of this kind solely because of the efforts of a number of young rapporteurs who conscientiously recorded the entire proceedings of the seminar, and they eminently deserve our thanks. One man whose presence would have enriched a seminar of this kind, but who passed away a few months earlier, was A R Kamat. A Marxist scholar working at Ae Gokhale Institute of Economics and Political Science, Pune, Kamat combined great erudition with modesty and a gentle charm. A one-time activist of the Communist Party of India, Kamat, who subsequently moved across to the academic world, remained till the end of his life a friend and sympathiser of the Communist movement. In publishing an obituary on A R Kamat by Dr Ashok Mitra, Social Scientist pays its homage to this gentle, dedicated and committed scholar. Sanjay Baru's paper was originally presented at a seminar at tlie American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad. Tills origin should be borne in mind; the author's intention was not to offer a comprehensive